In the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), withdrawal appeared to be almost as effective as condoms during typical use. However, in the 1995 NSFG, withdrawal was considerably less effective than condom use.

One of the many scientific sticking points surrounding the effectiveness of withdrawal is whether male pre-cum contains sperm. To my knowledge, only one study has been done on this with an N of something like 10. But that one study found that pre-cum doesn't contain sperm. So if this is valid, the main danger--aside from not pulling out quickly enough before ejaculation--would be from sperm that still might be in the urethra from a prior ejaculation. (Best to pee between ejaculations if you are using withdrawal for birth control!)

Withdrawal was the only method during the fertility decline in Europe, and was probably the only effective method of birth control used in the 1800s, when the average size of the American family decreased from 7 children to 3.5. I think it makes sense to propose it as a back up method when a woman skips a pill or two or passion keeps the condom unused.

The truth is that the chance of pregnancy by pre-cum is so remote that it is a statistical nonfactor. Two separate studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health found no sperm in pre-ejaculate fluid, as did a study conducted by Connecticut State University in conjunction with Princeton University . The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, Israel also failed to find any trace of sperm in pre-ejaculate fluid, and the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University maintains that "pre-ejaculate rarely contains sperm." Despite the overwhelming evidence -- some of which is readily available at sources like WebMD -- some continue to propagate the myth, maybe because they believe the end justifies the means. But a serious problem warrants an honest discussion, even if not all of the evidence helps make a case for condoms.

I used the withdrawal method for 6 years (with the same guy)- and I had sex more than a few times a week( a lot of this time every day) and never once fell pregnant - although I did trust the guy was in control of what he was doing.

I have let men come inside me a handful of times(and I mean a five or six!), outside of pregnancy(where it obviously didn't matter whether I fell pregnant or not!LOL) and three of those times I fell pregnant!!!

For those with more than a passing curiosity about whether there are any sperm cells in that little drop of whatever you want to call it, I highly recommend just having a look. Much more fun than reading and arguing about it. Mine was chock full--way too many to count--especially since they were zig-zagging around like crazy. I used a professional microscope, but you can see them with a toy microscope that can be bought at ToysRus for about $50.

Anyway, I hesitate calling my sample pre-cum, because some would want to argue that pre-cum by definition comes from the Cowper's gland and that's just not the source of sperm cells. Yes, yes yes. We know that. And the argument that the sperm cells must have been lingering in the urethra from a previous orgasm does not apply, since my last orgasm was years ago. The fact remains that, in my case anyway, after extensive stimulation whilst holding back orgasm, a drop of liquid appears and it's easy enough to transfer it to a slide and check it out. If you want to say that I am actually having a tiny orgasm, ok, whatever, but I don't think I'm a freak, and I think most men who practice sex without orgasm would get the same results. So get your kid a nice Christmas gift and borrow it for a while and let me know what you see.

I've been reflecting it deeply - if precum really contains a number of sperms after prolong sex abstinence,like let say by months to years..And also if it can really make someone pregnant.

One thing that i partially agree with you is that 'infrequent ejaculation' would make the ejaculate less potent as what Marnia have said in other forums..But i personally been through with my semen analysis after 16 days of abstinence and found it was normal. The count was 76.3 million per ml, motility was 65.17 progressive(grade III),morphology also normal and the tail is normal..

And though this maybe not an enough period of abstinence to be in the category of 'ejaculating seldomly', im still planning to have it again maybe after 5-6 weeks abstinence again..I'll let u know..

Im not here to argue or disprove others, just wanna share my experience..Honest..

My interest here is trying to resolve the following problem: If non-orgasmic sex is superior to orgasmic sex for what might be called psychological health or marital harmony, but orgasm is nevertheless required for procreation, procreation becomes a sacrifice, and for me it is not pleasant to think that life originates by way of sacrifice.

In this context, the problem of sacrifice is resolved if it turns out that orgasm is not required for procreation because of the presence of sperm in pre-cum. I have confirmed this to my own satisfaction with emperical evidence. Moreover, it is pleasant to believe that the sperm in pre-cum, having fought their way out without orgasm, are of superior genetic quality than those in the mother lode. This is mere speculation and beyond my resources to investigate, though I invite research labs to attempt confirmation. I would be happy to collaborate on experimental design.

The other way out of the dilemma is to reject the premise that non-orgasmic sex is superior. The question arises then, if orgasm in general is OK, how OFTEN is orgasm OK, indeed, is there an optimal frequency for orgasm, both in terms of psychological health and procreative potency?

Freud argued that a man should wait between orgasms until maximum potency is regained. Stockham might chime in that whatever applies to men should also apply to women. But how long should they wait, exactly? I would like to hope that this optimal refractory period exists as a constant rather than as a dependent variable, for a dependent variable here would make the situation unpleasantly complex and perhaps not worth the trouble of looking for.

One way of measuring this period might be to measure the volume of ejaculate where a man ejaculated a successive number of days apart until maximum volume was reached, but blood hormone levels might also be measured. Stockham and Marnia seem to think that it takes about two weeks, maybe a month, after orgasm for the hormonal environment and the related psychological proclivities to stabilize. Is it possible to be more specific? And if so, why? What is the mechanism? Is it entirely endogenous, or are there external environmental, indeed astronomical, forces at work?

Most establishment scientists regard it as mere coincidence that the human menstrual cycle is about the same length as the lunar cycle, but I would like to suggest that if there is an optimal inter-orgasmic refractory period, there is a yet-to-be-discovered mechanism involving the lunar/menstrual cycle, or perhaps even the solar cycle. I think Marnia mentioned that her partner has orgasms accidentally about once per year. The Wikipedia page on coitus reservatus has this sentence:

Prince Aly Khan, playboy son of the Agha Khan, married Rita Hayworth and was nicknamed "Santa Claus", perhaps by Orson Welles, because it is said he only came once a year.

Once a year would make good procreative sense. At the other extreme, it seems that a number of people are attracted to reuniting.info because they are looking for relief from an orgasm addiction that has a frequency of several times per day.

At the moment, I find the one-month period of interest. Let's assume that a woman begins her period at the new moon and ovulates at the full moon. Let's further assume that sex during menstruation is not only unlikely to result in conception but is also unpleasant. Now let's look at the week following menstruation, which would correspond to the 2nd quarter of the moon. And let's assume that I was wrong about pre-cum containing superior sperm and that what you really want for a good conception is just lots and lots of semen from the mother lode. I don't have a reference, but there seems to be some reasonable evidence that sexual stimulation increases the rate of semen production, such that in the present scenario, having non-orgasmic sex daily during the 2nd quarter, followed by sex with orgasm at the full moon, would result in a larger ejaculation than if the week of non-orgasmic sex were omitted.

I have had this hypothesis for several years and in fact used to have a yahoo group called the 2nd Quartarian Society for its discussion. I had some hundred or so women members at one point, but I made the mistake of inviting couples to the group who were having trouble conceiving. I wanted to suggest a possible alternative to the fertility drugs they were using, but I got some pretty nasty responses and dissolved the group.

Assuming that the ideal refractory period is one month, does it matter at what point in the lunar cycle the orgasm should occur? Is there something special about the full moon or the new moon that would render orgasm more likely to result in a good conception? An example of the kind of experiment I was trying to run through the 2nd Quartarian Society is the following: Let's say we have several women volunteers who know for a fact that they have been ovulating at the new moon and who have menstrual ovulation cycles the same length as the lunar cycle. They agree to follow this program for one year: they maintain strict celibacy except during the 2nd quarter of the moon, when they should have non-orgasmic sex daily, followed by orgasmic sex exactly at the full moon. Hypothesis: In response to their sexual behavior, their menstrual/ovulation cycles will gradually lengthen from a periodicity equal to that of the lunar cycle to a periodicity equal to that of the lunar cycle + about 1 day, such that at the end of the year they are ovulating at the full, rather than the new moon. Whether new-moon ovulation or full-moon ovulation is more natural or fertile is debatable. But the one-month periodicity may have evolved in response to moonlight and its effect on melatonin and related hormonal responses. A book has been written by a woman who claims to be able to move the time of ovulation by having women sometimes sleep with a light on according to her detailed instructions:

Yes,actually we didn't yet conceive. But we were not to the extend so desperate to have it.

Actually JHN, the thing that make me interested to ask you regarding this - potency of Non-orgasmic sex, is that when we actually planned conception last year.

Like you, i personally been practicing moderate non-ejaculatory sex 'on and off'. First we tried planning a baby after seven months, and then again after 4 months. But it didn't succeed. Then later, i encounter one of the book of Mantak Chia in which it stated that he personally ejaculated two times to impregnate her wife. They did it.

After that i wonder that maybe that was my mistake - infrequent ejaculation you know. And it even make me wonder when i read one of the fertility book that too infrequent ejaculation result to poor sperm motility. It should be in the boundary of normal ejaculation frequency - between 2-7 days, it stated. Some mentions, like tantra, ejaculation frequency has no bearing to affect sperm potency.

Which is which, i thought.

Then i decided to have my semen analysis ( after 16 days) and found out it was normal. As you know, before i did it, im pretty certain that it would really be normal - since you know, i have also been practicing health disciplines.

That was actually the reason.

Now, through that, all i can say is that thanks for every inputs that you shared, sincerely..

Also, we'll still know after 5-6 weeks as i have mentioned, hehe..

Do you have any reference which states that infrequent ejaculation does not affect sperm potency? Hope you dont mind.

often cited is one that purports to prove that daily ejaculatory intercourse, in spite of the fact that daily ejaculation results in much smaller volumes of ejaculate, is more effective at causing conception than saving it up for a week or a month or whatever until ovulation is observed. You might conclude that daily ejaculation results in more vigorous sperm, but I am more inclined to think that it just makes it more likely that there are some sperm cells present when ovulation does occur. I think the study turned out the way it did because most couples are pretty clueless when it comes to ovulation awareness and are quite unable to accurately observe the signs of ovulation. There may be a study that directly measures sperm count per unit of volume, or mobility or whatever, depending on frequency of ejaculation, but if that study exists, it surely would not account for men who practice deliberate non-orgasmic sex. What you'd have is a group of guys who ejaculated daily vs a group who ejaculated once a week or whatever. But that is all you'd know. The assumption would be that the guys in the latter group ejaculated only once a week because they had sex only once a week, and that would be a pretty good assumption. But there has never been to my knowledge any study at all including a third group: guys who had sex daily but who ejaculated only weekly or monthly or never. As Marnia can tell you, we are way under the radar.

I tend to think that if procreation is the goal, one must follow the demands of the limbic brain. Which I think means frequent intercourse, frequent ejaculations, masturbatory practices. The juices need to flow and flow often. A diet rich in meat helps and carbodyhrates and a diet probably of more refined sugars. One really needs to let oneself go.

It’s me again and been a while since we posted our experiences regarding pre-ejaculate.

Now, just wanna share mine regarding it.

After moderate non-ejaculatory sex, with an interval of about a week for each encounter, I found no sperms in my pre-ejaculate. I also do the solo stimulation thinking that maybe during the intimate relations with my partner, I’ll miss the secretion of pre-cum. Again, there were no sperms. I did collect it twice during intercourse and thrice during solo.

During this period, there was no ejaculation happening and the duration of sexual stimulation for each collection was more than 20 minutes.

Then later, after been through with pre-cum, I decided to have an actual ejaculation thinking maybe Marnia was right regarding infrequent ejaculation. I didn’t have my semen analysis. Instead, I just used my new microscope. What’s important is the sperms’ motility or the way they move right?

Then, when I did it, wow! Lots and lots!
They were moving so fast. Even just a single drop from the total ejaculate of one spoonful has so many in it!

Again, this was just my experience. I agree with ‘runlogans’ here that 1 subject of experiment couldn’t be a good methodology. So perhaps maybe others could try theirs also, right?

When I was a college student I came across an excellent guide to sex/sexuality produced by a university. I forget the actual group or people who wrote it, but it presented the basics of sexual anatomy and reproduction.

Then it said something so sensible that I've used it ever since, more or less: you more than double your chances of preventing pregnancies by using two methods. Say both methods succeed 90%, fail 10%, then the two when used together means the chances of both failing are about 1 in 100. Much better odds than just one used alone. Most of my sexual life I've followed this advice, but one time, using a single method (condom) that "failed" reinforced the wisdom of using two.

This one's a bit of a warning. I wonder if karezza practitioners would be more, or less likely to have motile sperm in precum. I would guess less, because they would be ejaculating infrequently, and sperm tend to break up when they sit around for awhile.

Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Hull York Medical School, University of Hull, Hull, UK. s.r.killick@hull.ac.ukAbstract

This study was designed to establish whether motile spermatozoa are released with pre-ejaculatory fluid and whether this fluid therefore poses a risk for unintended pregnancy. Forty samples of pre-ejaculatory fluid were examined from 27 volunteer men. Samples were obtained by masturbation and by touching the end of the penis with a Petri dish prior to ejaculation. Eleven of the 27 subjects (41% ) produced pre-ejaculatory samples that contained spermatozoa and in 10 of these cases (37% ), a reasonable proportion of the sperm was motile. The volunteers produced on up to five separate occasions and sperms were found in either all or none of their pre-ejaculatory samples. Hence, condoms should continue to be used from the first moment of genital contact, although it may be that some men, less likely to leak spermatozoa in their pre-ejaculatory fluid, are able to practice coitus interruptus more successfully than others.